Dear, my heart is ever longing,
Longs surfmen my bark to save;
Through my brain these thoughts are thronging,
Of a grave beneath the wave;
Of loved ones my heart is wronging,
And the belly of the whale;
'Round my soul their ghosts are thronging,
As I'm floating with the gale!
CHORUS
Dear, I fain would be returning
To the cove just where thou art,
While my languid breast is burning
Light and love full out my heart!
But cruel Fate my hopes is spurning,
And winds blow against my sail;
While out Death my life is burning,
I'm still floating with the gale!
LULA JOHNSON'S SONG
Written in Quinn Chapel, A. M. E. Church, Ninth and Walnut Streets, Louisville, Ky., Wednesday evening, October 16th, 1907, while Miss Lula E. Johnson was singing "Ave Maria."
I have heard the mock-bird singing when the orchards were in bloom,
And the sweetness of his music made the peacock don his plume;
Ay! I've heard cock-robin-redbreast chirping on a sunny day,
And the skylark soaring skywards, merrily sing his festal lay;
And the brown thrush and the bluebird thrill their little treble notes;
All the woodland songsters pouring songs of gladness from their throats—
But not one has touched so deeply, and not one has last so long
As the ever ringing cadence of sweet Lula Johnson's song!
When the breeze has ceased to whisper and the night is soft and still,
Save the awe-provoking shrilling of the ghastly whippoorwill,
As the moonbeams pour down brightly on the woodland, hill and dale,
I oft listen at my window to the queenly nightingale;
But no song of merry woodland, neither hill, nor dale, nor dell,
Has ever smote my bosom, nor has made my spirit swell,
Like the soul-inspiring music that so softly glides along
Oh! so softly and so gently in sweet Lula Johnson's song!